Month: December 2015

Who: Self, StuartWhen: 26 December 2015Weather: overcast and windyWhy: why not?Distance: 9 milesTime: 3 hours in total, including about half an hour on the beach

Christmas 2015 was a bit different for us. Instead of spending it at home in Bromley or with family, we had hatched a plan to spend it in the far North of Scotland, specifically in the cottage in Ullapool that we had stayed in before, which boasted glorious views of Loch Broom. Although we packed the winter walking gear, we had no real expectation of doing any serious hill walking given a pretty rubbish weather forecast not to mention the seriously short hours of daylight. Plus, we were both knackered after a very busy time at work and quite frankly needed a rest. Continue reading →

Having most recently looked back on the highlights and lowlights of our first 100 Munros, it seemed appropriate to also look back on the first 50 Wainwrights. I’m not sure yet whether I have any intention of finishing the lot – albeit for different reasons than why I don’t think I will finish the Munros; in the case of the Wainwrights it’s because some of them don’t particularly ‘grab’ me rather than because any of them seem particularly difficult or scary. Indeed Wainwright himself is quite scathing about some of the fells: Thunacar Knott in particular springs to mind out of the fells I have done, and Armboth Fell and Mungrisdale Common out of the ones I haven’t. (Which will leave me with an interesting dilemma as to whether to bother doing the latter when I finally get around to doing Blencathra, one of the classics that I have yet to do). Continue reading →

The blog has recently been on something of a hiatus – for the simple reason I’ve not done any walking. This is partly intentional – i.e. after finishing off the 100 we needed a bit of a break – and partly due to circumstance – i.e. being extremely busy as well as a run of bad weather. Although we are heading to the North of Scotland for a week in the next few days, the weather forecast suggests that a last hurrah for the year is looking a bit unlikely.

From a numbers perspective we have done very few Munros this year, but hit a major milestone, doing our 100th Munro on Beinn Bhreac in October. Looking back at our Munro bagging career so far there have been definite highs and lows; some glorious days, and some days where it has been a case of grit teeth and get on with it, although there have been relatively few of those given we don’t like walking in poor weather. Continue reading →